


Untitled

by acertaindefenseattorney



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertaindefenseattorney/pseuds/acertaindefenseattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klavier Gavin, between Turnabout Trump and Turnabout Serenade, with a groupie, in a hotel. </p><p>(No smut. Mostly thoughts and conversation. This is a character piece, really. I suppose. Written between 6 and 8am on a sleepless day in December. Why not.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

Klavier is getting old, he thinks. He tells her this. She laughs. ‘Oh, yeah. Ancient at twenty-five.’ ‘Ah. Fräulein,’ he smiles, nudging against her neck with his lips, drawing in her scent, a non-particular scent, less of the boozy perfume one might expect– she smells like soap, mostly, and dancing. ‘Age is more than just a number, ja?’   
  
She chuckles, leaning her head back. Beneath his lips he can feel that she is vibrating, a little, heartbeat going, going, and that is still odd to him, somehow. At twenty-five. To have dreamt of producing that reaction in women for so many years in his youth, and for it to happen now, in real life and to mean very little, other than that he was just on stage, and she was just in the audience – and that is how human beings work.  
  
Perhaps he  _is_  still young.

  
  
*

  
  
‘You won’t tell anyone?’ he says, and she takes a sip of her wine, and shakes her head earnestly.   
  
‘No. --- But you shouldn’t trust me.’   
  
He grins. ‘No. Nein, I don’t. There will be a non-disclosure agreement waiting for you to sign the moment you leave this room.’  
  
She pauses, then snorts. ‘Romantic, Gavin.’  
  
‘I know. I know. I am sorry.’  
  
‘And jaded.’  
  
‘Ja.’  
  
‘And sensible.’  
  
‘It’s not all rock-and-roll.’  
  
‘That last one was a compliment.’  
  
‘I know.’  
  
‘So. We’ve established that I won’t tell, and that even if I would, I would be legally obstructed from doing so. Go on. True, or false?’  
  
‘... I am very drunk.’ A pause. ‘No, it’s.’ he laughs, bowing his head. ‘You can stop laughing at me, Fraulein, any time you feel like.’  
  
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Do, please, go on.’  
  
‘It is a secret.’  
  
‘Top secret.’  
  
‘Tip, tip, top.’  
  
A pause, during which Klavier exhales a long breath, trying to let go some of that twitchy, nervous energy that comes of too much laughter. That sort of energy can turn bad; can sit hollow and low in the chest. Left unchecked, and he has always been this way, and Gott only knows why, but the next step from giddy is almost always morbid. He can feel that happening now, and so he sighs, shakes his head, takes a long draw on the bottle between them:  
  
‘True.’ 

  
  
*

  
  
The sex is good. Playful, distracting, which is what he needs. He has been too used to intensity, to teeth and claws, and bruises. This girl is none of those. The second time, they chatter on with him inside her and more than once he finds he is laughing too hard to do much of anything, and she doesn’t seem to mind. He is thankful for that. The whole thing is so devoid of expectation, and of pressure, that he could almost forget that she is only here because of his name. 

  
  
*

  
  
‘I was sorry about your brother,’ she murmurs, in a quiet, grey moment, somewhere between 1:30 and 2. Both are naked. Klavier swallows.   
  
‘... I’m overstepping.’  
  
‘Nein.’ he says, voice rough. ‘Nein. I just -- even still, ja? -- I forget that you know everything about me already.’  
  
‘Not everything,’ she says.  
  
‘Nein?’  
  
‘Only the facts. I know your brother killed a man. I don’t know why. I don’t know ... how you felt, when you found out.’ one of her fingers is tracing a pattern on his shoulder, ‘or if you ever suspected he might ... If you still love him.’  
  
He closes his eyes. The hollow feeling returns.   
  
‘Do you have siblings?’  
  
‘Two.’  
  
‘And if either of them were to kill a man? A man you didn’t know, had never heard of, for no reason that you could ever understand? Would you stop loving them?’  
  
‘I don’t know.’  
  
‘You would not,’ he says, simply.   
  
‘Tell me,’ she says, rolling to face him.  
  
And he does.

 

*

  
  
In the morning, the hotel provides a breakfast of french toast, berries, eggs, sausage, pastries... All that is good in the world, she says, and Klavier smiles to himself, slicing toast and meat into squares, sipping strong, black coffee. The sun is out. He can hear Daryan and the band down in the courtyard, whooping, playing some sort of game. They sound very young. Once again, he thinks, I’m getting old.  
  
They eat in relative silence. Here and there she talks about the food, what’s good, what isn’t, her favourite New York bakeries. She’s well travelled – sort of, between California and the East Coast. She tells him about her favourite LA sushi bar. He watches the view. He and Daryan travelled from LA to San Francisco, once, in Daryan’s brother’s beat up Toyota, pretending to be road-trippers, somewhere between his parents cutting off his allowance and their first successful audition for their first recording label. He tells her about that. Makes her laugh. Is demonstrative with his hands. Calling Kristoph from the road, panicked little drama queens, convinced they were going to bake to death in the desert. Three hours from him. He’d driven out, picked them up, maintained absolute silence, all the way back to Los Angeles. It is perhaps the least dangerous situation the two of them have ever put themselves in, but the most terrifying, and Klavier had never been more grateful to anyone in his life than he was when Kristoph pulled up, powder-blue Ford shining.

  
  
*

  
He dresses in the tall mirror.   
  
‘Did you have a good time, last night?’ he asks. He wishes there were a way to make it sound less sleazy, as though he were asking an escort. She nods, dabbing her finger against her tongue, collecting the last crumbs from her plate.   
  
Pulling on his jacket, he considers himself. He does not look old. ... Perhaps a little. In comparison to Apollo Justice, apple-faced, ridiculous, infectious boy. In comparison to Fräulein Wright. He closes his eyes. ‘Gut. ... So did I. And, Fräulein?’  
  
‘Mhm?’ she turns, brightly. She is still wearing the dress from the night before, rumpled and creased though it is from the night spent on the floor. He wishes he had thought to have it laundered for her. But there you go.   
  
‘Which magazine is it that you are working for?’  
  
For a moment, she looks indignant – set to deny it. But he smiles again, a small, resigned smile, and she lets her shoulders drop.   
  
‘Superstar,’ she says.   
  
‘Ah.’ his eyes close. ‘Superstar.’ with the German ‘zu’ sounding the beginning. ‘Ja. They’ve been after me for a while. ... You are a very good actress.’  
  
‘I’m–’  
  
‘Oh, don’t,’ he says, and he doesn’t mean to sound angry, but it’s possible that he might, voice thickening just enough. Just enough. ‘Don’t apologise.’  
  
He sighs. Brushes a hand back through his hair. ‘I presume you have a recording device on you, somewhere, ja? In the dress? I’ll take that. Max outside will see to your NDA, and compensate you for your financial losses.’   
  
Holding out his hand. She hesitates, perhaps wondering if she can feign ignorance, claim to have been naive, thought she might get away without signing the NDA and make her money off memory alone. Then reaches into the pocket of her dress, produces a small silver disc – the kind that could easily be mistaken for a coin – and places it in his outstretched palm.  
  
‘Danke.’ he swings open the door, holds it for her, like a gentleman.   
  
It is not her fault. Not really, he thinks, as he closes it behind her. This is a monster of his own making. It was a nice memory while it lasted. Most of them are.   
  
 _Mein Gott, he thinks. He misses his brother._

_*_

_  
  
_**> Play.** __  
  
‘When I was a kid. I thought he could do nothing wrong. Kristoph. And then as I got older I started to realise he was human, and there were things I didn’t like about him. More, there were things about him that worried me. Oh, ja. I worried about him constantly. But he was my brother. I worried about what he might do to _himself_. I worried about him overworking himself. I worried that he was paranoid. I worried that he wasn’t sleeping enough. I worried that he was vulnerable. I did not once worry about what he might do to someone else. ...Now he is in jail. I worry about whether he has enough to read. I worry that he is not eating. I worry that he is not sleeping well. I worry about his state of mind. I worry that I will lose the little of him that I have left... Of course I do. I can’t help it. I can’t make myself stop.’


End file.
